The Charter School of Wilmington is pleased to announce our annual Delaware Fall Tournament which will be held on February 11th, 2012. Registration will take place from 8-9am. We will be using NAQT set IS #113 for varsity and IS #110A for JV.

Fee Structure:$60.00 for the first team, $50.00 for each additional team.

Discounts:$10 off for each buzzer system, $10 off for each moderator, $10 for each 100 miles traveled. Minimum cost per team: $40.00

Tournament Structure: We will have a varsity and JV division. Students are eligible for JV if they are freshmen or sophomores, or upperclassmen who are new to quizbowl this year. All other students must participate in the varsity division.

Registration: Please send an email to charterquiz@gmail.com with DE Spring Tournament in the subject line or comment below. Please include the number of teams, buzzers, and moderators, and specify if the teams are for varsity or JV.

Directions: Our address is 100 N. Dupont Rd, Wilmington, DE 19807. If you are using a GPS, please do not forget to put the "N" in front of Dupont Rd, as it may direct you to another destination otherwise.

Bohan, a hypothetical if I might. If we can secure a bus, I would love to bring 2 JV teams, but I have a dilemma. My 2 Varsity teams are committed to a Spring Tournament in NJ which will be using Set IS 111, the very same set you are using in your Varsity division, creating this concern: If my JV teams can get a bus and attend, will there be a clear "wall" between your 2 divisions so that my JV kids clearly never have a chance to hear any of the Set 111 questions? If they could, I would not be able to bring my Varsity teams to the Spring competition in NJ, for obvious reasons. So, will there be a strong wall between the two divisions?

Glad to hear you are considering coming, Coach Powers. With regards to your concern, we will certainly do everything we can to keep the two groups from interacting. We will have the JV teams compete in a different part of the school than the varsity teams, and the question sets are all color coded to avoid any mix-ups, so I think that as long as nobody deliberately tries to get a hold of questions from a different set, we will be fine. Ideally we will have all the moderators bring used packets back to the war room just to be safe. I hope this is of some help.

The precautions to protect Set integrity which you have described make me confident that I need not worry on this score. So, if I can secure a bus, we would love to bring 1 or 2 of our JV teams to your JV tournament, indeed, maybe even 3 teams. I will get back to you ASAP about the bus, and in the meantime, good luck with your registrations, and thanks for your swift response to my concerns.

Hi Bro. Nigel, the field should be updated now. Usually most of the teams register within two weeks of the tournament, so we'll probably see the field expand as the tournament date nears.

On another note, we just received notification today that our school will actually be having their placement test on Dec. 10th, which means we may have to change the tournament date to Jan. 28th at the earliest as to not conflict with any other tournaments in the region. Again, this is just tentative but a heads up just in case.

bdubbs wrote:Hi Bro. Nigel, the field should be updated now. Usually most of the teams register within two weeks of the tournament, so we'll probably see the field expand as the tournament date nears.

On another note, we just received notification today that our school will actually be having their placement test on Dec. 10th, which means we may have to change the tournament date to Jan. 28th at the earliest as to not conflict with any other tournaments in the region. Again, this is just tentative but a heads up just in case.

List of villages in West Virginia wrote:Why, by the way, is January 28th the preferred date to change to? I already know that Alexa won't be able to make that tournament.

Probably something along the lines of Charter doesn't really have control of its own building and takes forever to get through red tape so that might be the earliest date to reschedule to that doesn't have another tournament.

We had thought that Jan. 28th was the earliest date after Dec. 10th that would not conflict with any other regional tournaments, but apparently we are mistaken. What dates would work for everyone? We are flexible in rescheduling the tournament.

Scheduling in January doesn't seem very feasible with the various other tournaments going on, HHH tournament on the 7th, our history bowl tournament on the 14th, and TJIAT and St. Joes on the 21st. For February, Delaware has Worldquest Regionals on the 4th, which will take up a large part of our team, and our middle school tournament is scheduled for the 18th, meaning Feb. 11th would be the next feasible date, or Feb. 25th, the latter of which may cause conflicts for NJ teams competing in NHBB states. So the best date I see is Feb. 11th, followed by Feb. 25th, any opinions?

Is the cancellation of the original December 10th date definite, or is it still possible it could be used? And, if it is not possible is there a consensus emerging for another date?I ask because upthread it was stated that the inability to use your building on the 10th was TENTATIVE, suggesting you still might be able to host on the 10th. So, can you offer any greater clarity about the chosen hosting date at this time? Thanks.

Hi Coach Powers, Mr. Gilbert is correct, our December date definitely will not work out unfortunately because our school is having their placement test that day and the other classrooms are being used for something else, we've been told. From the feedback we have received, both on here and from emails, is that Feb. 11th would be the optimal date for the majority of the teams who have expressed interest. I will send out and post an official notice after we have successfully booked the school for that date.

If this tournament is moved to February 11, which would be better for GDS, would the question set change as well? In the event that this tournament is moved, we would like to play at VCU on #111 on December 10. Thanks.

We will definitely be moving the tournament to Feb. 11th, just waiting on confirmation from the school. As for the question set, we could change it to IS 113 if that works for the other teams. The only conflict I see on NAQT is Bloomfield's tournament in March, which runs on 113 and I'm not sure if many NJ teams or other regional teams would like to attend that tournament.

On the issue of Bloomfield's use of IS 113 and New Jersey schools, my educated guess about my home state teams is as follows, since Prison Bowl is the same day as Bloomfield's Tournament: Possibly 2-4 NJ Teams will skip Bloomfield's tourney to take the opportunity to compete at Prison Bowl instead. In the past, teams that did do this usually had national aspirations so they wished to test themselves against the 4-8 national teams that typically show up at HCHS. The rest of the NJ teams that are active---maybe 18-28 in any given year from Northern or Central NJ--will probably attend Bloomfield. Of these 18-28, maybe 2-4 of these might also have national aspirations in any given year, but the rest, let's say 16-24, are probably only going to play local tournments, most because that is what they always do, the remainder probably because they are in a rebuilding year and nationals would not make sense at that time.

If this analysis has merit, it suggests that 4-8 Central & Northern NJ teams on an annual basis have genuine national aspirations, but half of these will miss Bloomfield to play at Hunter in its Prison Bowl. Bottom line therefore is that only 2-4 NJ teams outside of those going to Prison Bowl would probably consider coming to the Delaware Spring Tournament if a Set different from 113 Set used at Bloomfield were to be used. Conversely, the 2-4 teams in attendance at Prison Bowl might be delighted to have a 2nd opportunity to play 113, since they would not be able to play otherwise, since Prison Bowl conflicts with Bloomfied, thus the NJ Prison Bowl contingent might offset any losses in your NJ registrations by using Set 113.

If all of these judgments are reasonably close to being accurate, using 113 will not have a great impact on a significant number of the Central and Northern NJ teams who might otherwise attend your tournament. I hope this analysis helps in some way. If not, disregard it.

The date for the DE Spring Tournament has been officially confirmed for February 11th, 2011. We kindly ask that all teams to register again even if you had previously registered for the fall date, so that we can confirm your registration for the new date. (With the exception of Henderson and State College, who have already registered for the February date). Thank you!

There is no chance that we will bring the 5 teams i originally signed us up for. The combination of this tournament being moved, the state Winter Track championships, Swimming conference finals, and All-State Chorus (all of those three happening on the same day, February 11th) destroyed our teams for this day.

For now, i can say for sure that we will have no more than 2 of each, varsity and junior varsity. It's likely we will only have 1 junior varsity team. I will do my best to give you a real answer by early next week. Sorry for the late notice; this happens every year but i've never seen a fallout quite like this year. We might have fielded 6 teams in December; now 3 is more likely.

The field has been updated! Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend as I have a mandatory Science Olympiad competition that day, but this was the only date that was most convenient to reschedule for everyone attending, and I am sure Ravi and the team will do a great job running the tournament, plus Mr. Tressler is coming back to help us out and he has an excellent record of running tournaments smoothly.

I suspect we'll want to make groups of 5 or 6 and do five rounds in the morning as usual. (If, say a 19th team happens, probably a partial round robin.) In the afternoon, and if I draft the most efficient moderators for the top group, do you think we could do a five-round playoff round robin, followed by an advantaged final as necessary?

I'll probably only want to do three afternoon rounds for the other brackets, but I could change my mind depending on how the morning goes.

Who is this Phoenixville team -- Phoenixville, Pennsylvania like the Phoenixville Pike that I live on?

Bad Boy Bill wrote:I suspect we'll want to make groups of 5 or 6 and do five rounds in the morning as usual. (If, say a 19th team happens, probably a partial round robin.) In the afternoon, and if I draft the most efficient moderators for the top group, do you think we could do a five-round playoff round robin, followed by an advantaged final as necessary?

That's fine. I would be happy to read in this top group. NAQT packets go really really fast so 25 minute games should be the norm, if not faster among the TOP. TEAMS.

I'll probably only want to do three afternoon rounds for the other brackets, but I could change my mind depending on how the morning goes.

There is no reason why we can't play the same amount of rounds in any other bracket. This is one of only tournaments that has less afternoon games for some brackets/teams than others that we go to all year, but i don't think it's necessary since the field really isn't that large, and the JV brackets are running on A sets anyway. I mean, if it's clearly going slower in the morning, then we''ll re-evaluate, but i'd hope we wouldn't have to.

Has the tournament schedule (specifically, registration window & start time for the rounds) been nailed down yet? Those of us traveling to Wilmington from multiple hours away need to know that info ASAP so we can figure out at what ungodly hour of the morning we need to leave in order to arrive there on time! Thanks.

Robbie Ram wrote:Has the tournament schedule (specifically, registration window & start time for the rounds) been nailed down yet? Those of us traveling to Wilmington from multiple hours away need to know that info ASAP so we can figure out at what ungodly hour of the morning we need to leave in order to arrive there on time! Thanks.

In the past, the morning meeting was 9:00, or shortly thereafter, with round 1 usually starting by 9:30.